Hong Kong

The recent abduction case/claim in Hong Kong has taken an interesting turn: The HK police arrested the man, and seem to be accusing him of fabricating the incident. (But why would he do that? The whole case is unclear. There is of course no dearth of evidence on torture and mistreatment of people abducted by the Chinese authorities, on the mainland. Fabricating some, in HK, would seem to serve only to sow doubt about such matters, including about the recent several abductions from HK. So the possibility that generating such doubts itself is the purpose, should probably not be discounted. ). See too: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-40932772 –Magnus Fiskesjö, nf42@cornell.edu

Acting Police Commissioner Alan Lau has said the police will consider charging Democratic Party member Howard Lam with misleading police officers.

Last Friday, Lam said he was abducted and assaulted by suspected mainland agents in Hong Kong. He claimed that he was falsely imprisoned, interrogated and assaulted by men who inserted 21 staples into his legs. Continue reading →

Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Howard Lam (L), who claims he was abducted, blindfolded and beaten by mainland China agents, shows his stapled thighs and injuries to the media in Hong Kong on 11 August 2017. Image copyright AFP.

A veteran democracy activist in Hong Kong says he was kidnapped, beaten and tortured by agents of mainland China after trying to get in touch with Liu Xia, the widow of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.

The activist, Howard Lam, said on his Facebook page in late July that he had obtained a signed photo of the Barcelona football player Lionel Messi, and that he intended to send it to Ms Liu as a condolence gift. Continue reading →

This two-day programme co-presented by the SOAS China Institute and Zuni Icosahedron marks the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from the UK to China with a series of events focusing on intercultural exchange and city-to-city collaboration in the performing arts. Participants will reflect on Hong Kong’s cultural exchanges with London and several Asian cities over the past twenty years, as well as discuss proposals, opportunities, strategies, and challenges for the next two decades.

This symposium will explore aspects of theatre production in Hong Kong in the post-1997 period from a transnational perspective, including intercultural and cross-genre collaborations with other Sinophone and Asian performance cultures from Singapore, Taiwan, China, and Japan, Cantonese opera in the diaspora, experimental and political performance, and intersections between indigenous and foreign theatrical forms.

Late last week, as Hong Kong celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its return to Chinese sovereignty, pixels of white flickered on the slick glass façade of Hong Kong’s second-tallest skyscraper. The Chinese characters gliding up the building’s 108 stories bore a staunch Communist-style exhortation: “Enthusiastically Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Hong Kong’s Return to the Motherland, Fervently Welcome President Xi Jinping’s Inspection of Hong Kong.” This greeting—coinciding with President Xi’s first visit to Hong Kong since taking power—is now raising fears about the freedom of artistic expression in Hong Kong, calling into question its future as an international arts hub. Continue reading →

Hong Kongers are known to have a good sense of humor. And with Chinese president Xi Jinping’s visit to Hong Kong for the 20th anniversary of the territory’s handover, locals have been laughing off the tense political environment. There’s been no shortage of memes surrounding Xi’s trip…

Commercial buildings in the business district of Central in Hong Kong. Runaway home prices exacerbated by cross-border capital flight have made home ownership an increasingly unattainable dream for many Hongkongers. Photo: EPA

Calls for Hong Kong independence are a non-starter. But here we are being hammered by a seeming avalanche of talk on the subject by those who don’t want us to talk about it. This isn’t exactly how I imagined we would be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the handover.

Such tough talk is worrisome. It widens the already wide gulf of distrust between Beijing and Hong Kong. With emotions running high, it is time to call for pause and caution. Continue reading →

Lu also said that what made Hong Kong a success ‘was not up to any outsider to comment on’. Photo: Kyodo

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has declared the Sino-British Joint Declaration, that laid the groundwork for Hong Kong’s handover, a “historical document that no longer has any realistic meaning”, after Britain and the United States spoke of the binding effect of the 1984 treaty on China and the city.

President Xi Jinping waits to meet Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying after arriving in the city on Thursday. Photo: Reuters

As President Xi Jinping landed in Hong Kong for the first time as the country’s top leader on Thursday, he and his wife were accompanied by a pool of officials in charge of Beijing’s policies for the city.

The handful of officials, most of them Xi’s trusted aides, include party big shots involved in top-level policymaking, government and foreign affairs. They include companions rarely seen in Xi’s domestic and overseas trips, such as the PLA’s top general, and those who run the nerve hubs of China’s legislature and consultation body that ensure the loyalty of social elites.

The offices involved cover all channels of command between Beijing and Hong Kong. So who are they and what do they do? Continue reading →

According to an article that Radio Free Asia published, Hong Kong University released the results of a recent survey reporting that the percentage of Hong Kong youths who acknowledged their identity as “Chinese” was only 3.1 percent, the lowest number in history. At the same time, the percentage of those who identify themselves as “Hong Kongese” was 65 percent, 3 percent higher than in the previous survey. The article quoted an interview with a few residents in Hong Kong. They felt that the political milieu and the livelihood in Hong Kong have worsened since its return to the mainland 20 years ago and that Beijing has never kept its promises. One professor from Hong Kong University said that Beijing constantly interferes with Hong Kong policy. Meanwhile Hong Kong youths are not happy with the uncivilized behavior that the tourists from the mainland display while they shop in Hong Kong or tour in foreign countries. The Hong Kong government didn’t bother to understand the dissatisfaction from the Hong Kong youths whose wish to have Hong Kong be independent continues to rise but is being suppressed.

Hong Kong University has conducted the survey once every two years since 1997. The “Chinese Citizen Identity” result was growing in the first 10 years from 1997 to 2006 but dropped sharply starting in 2008 and fell below 10 percent in 2012, two years before the “Occupy Central” movement took place.

A group of troubled high-school students look to rise above their broken family backgrounds and pursue their music dreams in the diverting, if haphazardly scripted, Our Seventeen.

The second narrative film by Macau writer-director Emily Chan Nga-lei – and a full-length spin-off from her eponymous short film from 2014 – it shows a marked improvement over Chan’s first feature, Timing, also from 2014, which was screened at a Hong Kong “premiere” but never received a proper release in the city.

Unusually for a famous photographer, Fan Ho only ever owned one camera, a classic Rolleiflex 3.5 A (type K4A) that he used as a young man.

Ho was no ordinary photographer, though, and for many decades he was better known in Hong Kong as an actor and a movie director than for the distinctive monochrome images taken with that old camera on the streets of the city. Continue reading →

All four articles evince a keen sense of the centrality of Cantonese language in maintaining the cultural identity of its speakers. I urge anyone who is interested in Cantonese to read each of these articles to gain a better idea of the vital issues of language education and preservation that members of the Cantosphere are facing, wherever they are. Continue reading →

To celebrate the tenth anniversary issue of Cha and to mark the twentieth anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover, we are hosting Cha International Poetry Prize 2017, in collaboration with PEN Hong Kong.

The competition is open to ALL poets. Thanks to several generous sponsors from the Asia-Pacific region, including the NINJA! Arts Grant, we are able to offer a total prize money of US$3201 (First Prize US$1501; Second Prize US$800; Third Prize US$400 and five Commended Prizes, each US$100). All eight winning poems will be published in the tenth anniversary issue of Cha, due out in late December 2017. As ever with Cha contests, there is no entry fee. Continue reading →

HONG KONG (AFP) – Nine democracy activists were arrested in Hong Kong on Thursday (April 27) over an anti-Beijing protest, according to campaign groups, in the latest swoop by police as protesters say they are being persecuted.

Concerns are growing that the semi-autonomous city’s freedom is under threat from Beijing, fuelling calls from some activists for greater autonomy or even a complete split from China. Continue reading →

“Defense and Resistance,” on display at the Asia Society in Hong Kong, shows photographs of the artist, South Ho, walling and then unwalling himself in with bricks marked “Made in Xianggang,” the word for Hong Kong in Mandarin, spoken on the mainland. Credit: Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

HONG KONG — As 1,194 electors were casting ballots on Sunday for Hong Kong’s next leader, Sampson Wong was tagging Facebook videos that showed city residents making breakfast, riding trains and playing with cats.

The scenes were unremarkable, and that was the point: Mr. Wong and other members of the Add Oil Team, an artists’ collective, were broadcasting the videos of people engaged in activities that did not include voting as a critique of an unrepresentative political process. “No Election in Hong Kong Now,” the title of their Facebook Live stream said.Continue reading →

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